First-grader Ava Sayegh went to see Jupiter Elementary School nurse Holly Hoover in February, saying her throat was bothering her. The problem was much worse than a sore throat.

“When I went to take her temperature, she couldn’t keep her mouth around the thermometer,” Hoover said. “I said, ‘Are you OK?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’”

Hoover said she knew something wasn’t right.

“I quickly assessed her lungs and realized she had no breath sounds on her right side,” she said.

A chest X-ray would later reveal that Ava had a pneumothorax – a collapsed lung caused by a cyst that covered two-thirds of her right lung.

Ava’s mother, Cindy Sayegh, said she was shocked.

“She’s very healthy. She does gymnastics. (She’s) always running around. Even after the pediatrician, she wanted to go to a friend’s house and play. She doesn’t complain,” Cindy Sayegh said.

All of Ava’s organs were pushed to the left side and her life was in danger. She ended up spending 11 days in the St. Mary’s intensive care unit.

Ava recovered and is doing great, her mother said.

The Health Care District of Palm Beach County honored Hoover, saying her intuition and experience probably saved Ava’s life. Doctors at St. Mary’s said they were astonished that Ava’s condition was detected so early.

“With Ava not having any symptoms, what made you come to the hospital? Of course, I told everybody is was nurse Holly Hoover, and everyone was just astonished that a school nurse was able to detect something like that,” Cindy Sayegh said.

“I think every day in the health room, it’s not a typical day. It’s like, you never know. A lot of our kids have chronic illness that we are aware of, but it’s the ones that we are not aware of that worry me,” Hoover said.